Fathers

Psalms 52

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Why do you boast of mischief, mighty man? God’s loving kindness endures continually. Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. You love evil more than good, lying rather than speaking the truth. You love all devouring words, you deceitful tongue. God will likewise destroy you forever. He will take you up, and pluck you out of your tent, and root you out of the land of the living. The righteous also will see it, and fear, and laugh at him, saying, “Behold, this is the man who didn’t make God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness.” But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in God’s house. I trust in God’s loving kindness forever and ever. I will give you thanks forever, because you have done it. I will hope in your name, for it is good, in the presence of your saints.

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What the Fathers say

Psalms 52:2

Western Saints

Augustine of Hippo

"In iniquity the whole day upon injustice has your tongue thought" [Psalm 52:2]: that is, in the whole of time, without weariness, without intermission, without cessation. And when you do not, you think, so that when anything of evil is away from your hands, from your heart it is not away; either you do an evil thing, or while you can not do, you say an evil thing, that is, thou evil-speakest: or when not even this you can do, you will and thinkest an evil thing. "The whole day," then, that is, without intermission. …

Exposition on Psalm 52 ↗

Thomas Aquinas

"All day long your tongue devises injustice," etc. Here he shows the second point which he set forth above: namely, that they not only glory in their malice, but think about how they may do evil. And first he sets forth the assiduity of their thinking without interruption; hence he says, "All day long your tongue has devised injustice." It is said improperly that the tongue thinks, because thinking pertains to the heart; and therefore it can be understood in two ways: "your tongue," that is, your heart, which is manifested in the …

Exposition on the Psalms of David ↗